Thorstein Bunde Veblen, one of Wisconsin's most controversial figures, was born near here on July 30, 1857. In 1865 the Veblen family moved to Minnesota, where Thorstein graduated from college in 1880. A deep thinker who was usually lonely and always in debt, he received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale in 1884 and taught at several colleges. Though he was not a popular teacher, he attracted dedicated followers to his extreme social and economic ideas. In 1899, his book "The Theory of the Leisure Class" created immediate controversy. During much of his life he remained estranged from society, and his pale, sick face, beard, loose-fitting clothes, shambling gait, weak voice, and desperate shyness enhanced this estrangement and deepened his loneliness. Yet the society that did not accept Veblen the man came to value the products of his penetrating mind, and his books and articles have been described as perhaps "the most considerable and creative body of social thought that America has produced."